He mentions that these factors can reliably trigger our compliance in the absence of the genuine substance of authority.

Here’s how the Authority principle might be applied to ecommerce marketing, and brands that are nailing it:

A. Titles – Positions of power/experience

When we are in a field that we’re not really good at, we are willing to listen to someone who does.

We can’t possibly cross-reference and confirm that the people we meet are as credible as they claim to be, so we have learnt to rely instead on quicker and more superficial cues, such as job titles.

In a business or ecommerce context, however, it seems that experience and popularity counts for more. Titles like ‘Founder’, ‘CEO’, or ‘Director’ are probably more persuasive than a Ph.D- assuming a certain baseline number of followers.

The “paypal mafia” photographed at Tosca in San Francisco, Oct, 2007. Photo by Robyn Twomey for Fortune

PayPal Mafia refers to the group of PayPal team members who left when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002. Some of them went on to start other companies, such as Yelp, Tesla, LinkedIn, Palantir, YouTube, some of which are now worth billions of dollars.

When introducing new startups or individuals in the media, any association with successful companies is often mentioned (e.g. “Quora was co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever”).

When we read something like that, we instantly establish a sort of respect for this individual/startup.

When your customers need help, they want to talk to someone who is friendly, but more importantly, competent enough to solve their problems.

You might not be able to establish the credentials your customer support staff possess, but you can give them empowering job titles.

This might reduce some of your customers’ anxiety, and enable them to entrust your staff to get the job done.

Apple’s Geniuses are tech support staff that handle software and hardware repairs. While I doubt all the staff are certified geniuses in a psychological sense, they are definitely vigorously-trained by Apple.

And they’d better be; because you wouldn’t want to trust your expensive iMac to someone you didn’t think was an expert.

B. “Clothes” – Superficial cues that signal authority

In a post on the principle of Authority, Dean Rieck describes a reporter who managed to trick people into giving him their money and personal details at a bank. He disguised himself as a guard, and placed a notice stating that the ATM was out of order, and to hand deposits over to the guard on duty.

Psychological research has shown that people take only 1/10th of a second (0.1s) to form first impressions about someone. Another study found that web users take half that time (0.05s) to evaluate a website.

So how do you communicate authority as effectively as a guard’s uniform in such a short time?

B1. Look professional and relevant to industry

As one of the findings in the Stanford Web Credibility Project states:

We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. The visual design should match the site’s purpose.

The study also found that people had more on visual appeal when assessing website credibility for certain categories of sites; one of which were ecommerce sites.

Trappings are accessories that help to inform others of a certain role. A police badge and gun are the trappings of a police officer, while an expensive car are possible trappings of a successful businessman.

Ecommerce trappings are slightly different. The only information people can get about how successful/authoritative your brand is online, through:

Your website (“Featured by”, testimonials)

What other people say about you on other websites (features, case studies)

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